Strange Story of DC's Lost AM Radio Station Still Transmitting Road Closures From 2013

Make a FOIA Request , Then we can find out the loaction.
73's Joe

 

Diamonds are Forever, my most favorite Bond Movie and the 1971 Mach One Mustang !

 

Hi Art, Huge Connery Bond Fan here... I ended up with a nice little secretary special 72 Coupe bought new by my Mom and given to me as my daily driver while in college. That photo was right before I traded it in...

 

Talk about a total un--appreciation for radio you're it! There are still people that listen to AM radio, I'm one, not all the time or for long hours, but there are times I like to listen to see how far away the stations I hear are. Maybe you should listen to some of the AM stations on 3.885 once in a while, you might learn something. Or are you as narrow minded about learning as you are about Ham radio? AM is where Ham radio got it's start, there wasn't SSB back then, or FM.
That message was probably heard by many people that just didn't bother to report it, simply laughed and went on with their lives.
I'm 70 years old and have been hooked on radio since I was 13 years old. I'm still impressed with being able to send my signal out all over the planet to talk to people in a lot of far off countries. You are what I would call a young whipper snapper. You may be an engineer but I wonder about what prompted you to get a Ham license in the first place. I bet you just love that you can use digital modes to use a repeater to access the internet, get to another country to their repeater and talk to people on that country's repeater. To me that's not, NOT Ham radio. Might as well use a cell phone and just dial up people in that country. It takes very little knowledge of radio and antennas to use the internet to accomplish a connection to a foreign country. Simple minded appliance operators.
Look up Bob Heil's call sign on QRZ. Or don't you know who Bob is? His call is K9EID. Read about him on his QRZ page. Again, you might learn something.

Have a bad day.......
Mark L. Wuori AKA / N8TCQ

 

Wow......

 

Some fires are better left to burn themselves out.

 

I found this story interesting, but I sure wouldn't play "taps" over radio. I've been a ham since 1967, first licensed while still in high school. The hobby turned into a career in commercial broadcasting, radio, not TV. Today, I still like to rag chew on ssb, mostly 40 and 20. I totally enjoy getting to know other people and letting them get to know me.
I cannot tell you how many times I've been told "this was the best QSO I've had in years" and it wasn't anything special I did. Just more of the same thing I've been doing for the last 50 plus years. Talking to other people and having fun. Try it, if you never have. You'll be amazed at the things you will learn and how much fun you can have. I never say "hi hi"...I just laugh and be myself.

 

I thought all of it is Ham Radio? If it requires a HAM LICENSE to do it, it's Ham Radio. I used to even think ECHOLINK was computer crap, but it is hooked up to repeaters and now all these digital voice modes DMR et Al... It's all getting far more computer integrated. I even need to boot up a computer for my Radio to work. That can't be ham radio, can it? My 6500 is one of the best sounding AM rigs I have ever had... and as an old lady I can even still carry it under one arm... I can't work DX on 160 remote from A wrist radio yet, but I bet somebody may have.

My Hubby and I listen to the radio every time we get in the car... and right on to one of select FM stations... and when we're driving for hours at night, I'm DXing on the radio. My Pickup can do Sirius XM and I do have several favorites from over there... I used to have a retired 400 KHz Valcom Vertical and there's a lot of interesting things to listen to below the AM band if your radio can tune there. The Old antiquated IC-7800 could hear stuff right down to about 20-25 KHz... Broadcast radio might no longer be WHOLE, but it is still alive... and you'd be surprised below the things you can listen to subcarriers are busy doing The dark sides bidding... BWAHAHAHA.... that was supposed to be an evil hahaha...

Have a Fab Day everybody,
Erika DD

 

Kinda like a lot of things in Washington D.C. They just keep going and going and.....

 

A transmitter can be anywhere - even in a larger tower serving multiple customers and the golden rule is to not mess with the equipment belonging to someone else unless it's giving off some smoke. So if it's on and looks like it's working nobody touches it. The site owner should know, but some site owners just don't check if a customer has left behind equipment or not, especially if it's a small non-descript box that's tucked in behind something.

And if the FCC or corresponding don't check it can go on until someone discovers some weirdness.

So I assume that there are quite a number of odd repeaters just out there waiting for a call with the right requirements to open up.

 

My idea is it was just someone in the Trump administration paying respect to Obama.........Not as likely as the forgetting to throw the switch theory.....

 

It is not a new phenomenon. Back in college in the late 60's swapping stories over beers a radio/TV major told the following. His summer job was at a small station on Maryland's eastern shore. He worked the grave yard shift and some point during the shift he had to play to old CONELRAD testt message. While that was playing he then had to dashed out the station door, across a field and at least one fence to the transmitter and record the power output. He prided himself on no dead air time. He returned to the station to hear, "This is not a test this is an actual emergency please tune to . . . " He waited for the flood of calls. It never came.

 

CONELRAD, I remember seeing a Twilight Zone episode that mentioned that.
It's my thought that the more things are used, the more they are ignored.
For instance, car alarms. Nowadays most people hear a car alarm and ignore it.
As for the EAS tones, I've been around people when the EAS tones go off
and they are ignored. I always stop and pay attention, even when it's just a test.
Nowadays with an instant connection in your pocket, it seems most people forget that
those little trackers rely on cell towers. Granted, during Katrina they
had some cell sites back up and running within a day, but I guess it's just habit for me
to rely on good old fashioned radio. A crystal set will work, needs no batteries, and
will run as long as there is RF energy to make it work. The TIS at both ends of the band
can help in remote areas and even urban ones. As I typed in an earlier post, I like to
broacast band DX. As a bonus, I even get to hear lightning sometimes.
If you go to Google and type When Radio Was, you'll find a site that lists a lot of
old shows and stations that broadcast them. AM is not dead, just lost to the younger
generation. Like ham radio, "people still do that? " Why yes, yes they do.

 

Similar issue in Connecticut in 2005. The test TV EAS message sent by all the stations in the state inadvertently said evacuate the state. No reason was given. At first blame was placed on hackers; an employee later admitted to entering the wrong code. A study afterward showed the message reached 11% of state residents and the most common reaction was to change channels or seek confirmation from friends or neighbors. 911 call centers were not flooded with phone calls and only a few people decided to evacuate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Connecticut_false_evacuation_alert

 

Interesting story. Likely missed it somewhere in the pages & pages, but I'd be curious to know make/model specifics of this thing that just sat there like a good Golden Retriever for 8 years, doing what it was supposed to do with - apparently - nary a hiccup.